She's the Man (review)

Abstract

She's Man. Dir. Andy Fickman. DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount. 2006. Over course of so-called Bard Boom--which began with Kenneth Branagh's Henry V in 1989 and continues unabated with his recently released As You Like It--cultural manifestations of Shakespeare have become increasingly populist. In 2005, an extract from A Midsummer Night's Dream was used to advertise that most iconic youth-oriented product, Levi's jeans; and in 2007, playwright himself battled intergalactic demons in an episode of third series of hugely successful, revamped BBC television program Doctor Who. I chose to study this popular appropriation of Shakespeare in my doctoral research because, as a teenager, I witnessed how my generation's attitudes towards our exam texts and their author were changed films like William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996), Shakespeare in Love (Madden, 1998), and 10 Things I Hate About You (Junger, 1999). For this reason, I was interested to see a new addition to burgeoning Shakespearean teen film sub-genre, She's Man (Fickman, 2006), which declares itself inspired by Twelfth Night and was written Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, duo behind 10 Things screenplay. The key element of Twelfth Night reproduced in She's Man is central plot involving gender masquerade and romantic complication. Viola Hastings disguises herself as her twin brother Sebastian, taking his place at a new boarding school while he is on an unauthorized jaunt to London with his band, in order to win a place on boys' soccer team and thereby prove that she is capable of competing with stronger sex at the beautiful game. There Viola falls for soccer captain and roommate Duke Orsino, who has a crush on her lab partner, recently dumped and vulnerable Olivia Lennox, who is in turn attracted to unusually sensitive new boy in class. Viola-as-Sebastian offers Duke insights into female mind and receives extra soccer coaching in return. The situation reaches a head when real Sebastian returns and, unaware of his sister's deception, is astonished to find himself first assailed Olivia and then ushered onto soccer pitch. During course of this crucial match, truth emerges and Viola establishes her right to play with boys scoring winning penalty kick. Duke recovers from shock of discovering that his teammate and dorm confidante is also a hot chick, and he escorts Viola--now in her woman's weeds--to debutante ball, where Sebastian partners with Olivia. In this way, makers of She's Man follow Shakespeare's blueprint in homage to Twelfth Night, as they explain in a DVD featurette. The film's cast of supporting characters and subplots gesture towards play, but relationship is fairly loose. Duke has two soccer playing friends named Andrew and Toby, who serve a comic function as idiotic embodiments of contradictory impulses of today's adolescent masculinity. Olivia, meanwhile, attracts unwanted attentions of Malcolm Festes, a preppy and obsessive fellow student, who has a pet tarantula named Malvolio and who shows up at climatic soccer match wearing yellow, diamond-patterned golfing socks. The addition of extra players to romantic game, in form of Viola's dumb jock ex-boyfriend Justin and Sebastian's high-maintenance girlfriend Monique, seems intended to emphasize difference between unsatisfactory, transient modern relationships and timeless true love. Other references are made to film's Shakespearean intertext through diegetic detail: school is Illyria Preparatory; debutante season is organized Stratford Junior League; there is a billboard advertising school play What You Will; and students' favorite eating and meeting place is Cesario's Restaurant. The only lines from Shakespeare's text that are cited in She's Man are now proverbial ones concerning greatness, which here feature as a sporting pep-talk, with Duke quoting his coach rather than original source. …